Contents

Rackspace Cwoud announced Mosso LLC in March, 2006, as a whowwy owned subsidiary biwwed as a utiwity computing offering.[2][3] As it pre-dated mainstream adoption of de term cwoud computing, it was "retoowed" and rewaunched on February 19, 2008, adopting de tagwine "Mosso: The Hosting Cwoud".[4] The "Mosso" branding (incwuding de mosso.com domain) was den dropped on June 17, 2009 in favour of "The Rackspace Cwoud" branding (incwuding de rackspacecwoud.com domain name).[5][6] Since den, customer contracts were executed wif Rackspace US, Inc. d/b/a The Rackspace Cwoud rader dan wif de Mosso LLC subsidiary.[7]

Redundancy is achieved by repwicating dree fuww copies of data across muwtipwe computers in muwtipwe "zones" widin de same data center, where "zones" are physicawwy (dough not geographicawwy) separate and suppwied separate power and Internet services. Upwoaded fiwes can be distributed via Akamai Technowogies to "hundreds of endpoints across de worwd" which provides an additionaw wayer of data redundancy.[10]

The controw panew and API are protected by SSL and de reqwests demsewves are signed and can be safewy dewivered to untrusted cwients. Deweted data is zeroed out immediatewy.[10][11]

There is no native operating system support for de Cwoud Fiwes API so it is not yet possibwe to "map" or "mount" it as a virtuaw drive widout dird-party software wike JungweDisk dat transwates to a supported standard such as WebDAV. There are no concepts of "appending" or "wocking" data widin Cwoud Fiwes (which may affect some disk mirroring or backup sowutions), nor support for permissions or transcoding. Data is organised into "containers" but it is not possibwe to create nested fowders widout a transwation wayer.[10][12]

The technowogy behind de service was purchased in Rackspace's October 22, 2008 acqwisition of Swicehost and de servers were formerwy known as "swices". These are "much cheaper and generawwy easier to use dan a traditionaw dedicated server", dough it is stiww necessary to maintain de operating system and sowution stack which is not reqwired for de Cwoud Sites product.[15] This is one of de main differentiators between de two services; where Cwoud Servers incwudes fuww root access and dus awwows for more customisation, de Cwoud Sites product is wess fwexibwe but reqwires wess maintenance.

On December 14, 2010, Rackspace began offering a managed service wevew on de Cwoud Servers product, which added additionaw support for de operating system and common appwications as weww as patching and oder routine services.[16] This additionaw support wevew does come at an increased cost, however.

During 2014, Rackspace ceased to advertise de First Generation Cwoud Servers and de Standard Next Generation Cwoud Servers on its main Cwoud Servers product page, opting to onwy discwose de Next Generation Performance 1 and Performance 2 products dat reqwire a minimum $50/monf service charge per account for support service. The First Generation and Standard Next Generation pwatforms are now referred to as "Legacy Infrastructure" buried in de pricing page for de owd products.[17] The minimum charge for de wowest product on de First Generation pwatform is $10.95/monf for de 256MB instance whiwe de minimum charge on de Standard Next Generation pwatform is $16.06/monf for de 512MB instance.[17] On de Performance pwatform, de minimum charge for one server is $23.36 for de 1GB instance + $50 minimum service charge, for a totaw of $73.36/monf.[18] Rackspace is qwietwy phasing out its owder, wess expensive products in transition to a managed pwatform where mandatory support charges are incorporated into de cost of de services.

Cwoud Toows are appwications and infrastructure software buiwt to run on de RackSpace cwoud.[19] Appwications wisted incwude Zend, a PHP stack, Cwoudkick, a cwoud performance testing services, CopperEgg, a reaw-time cwoud server and appwication monitoring service, Xeround, a MySQL cwoud database, and MongoLab, de cwoud version of de popuwar NoSQL database MongoDB.

API

The Cwoud Servers API waunched on Juwy 14, 2009 under de Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 wicense awwows cwients to create, configure and controw virtuaw servers.[20] In addition to issuing basic management commands dis "enabwes ewastic scenarios" whereby servers are instantiated and destroyed in response to fwuctuating woad (one of de key characteristics of cwoud computing).[21]RightScawe is among dird-party providers to have announced support for dis API.[22]

Cwoud Sites is a pwatform as a service offering, simiwar to traditionaw web hosting onwy buiwt on horizontawwy scawabwe hardware infrastructure. A fixed mondwy credit card payment gives users access to de service wif an awwocation of compute, storage and bandwidf resources. Shouwd dis awwocation be exhausted den subseqwent usage is biwwed on a utiwity computing basis. It awwows an "unwimited" number of sites, databases and emaiw accounts and incwudes resewwer options such as cwient biwwing and support.[23] Touted as "de fastest way to put sites on de cwoud", it runs Windows or Linux appwications across "hundreds of servers".[13]

The service incwudes up to 10,000 "compute cycwes" per monf which "is roughwy eqwivawent to running a server wif a 2.8 GHz modern processor for de same period of time" (wif additionaw cycwes priced at USD 0.01). This non-standard unit of measurement primariwy refwects CPU processing time but awso incwudes I/O operations so pages wif many database qweries wiww consume more "compute cycwes".[25] It can however be difficuwt to compare services between providers widout standard units of measurement.

Caveats

Cwoud Sites does not support Java, Tomcat, CowdFusion, SSH, RDP, API access, Microsoft Exchange or custom server-side components at dis time.[24] It is awso not possibwe to set up muwtipwe top wevew domains to point to de same web root directory.[26] The .NET environment dropped support for "fuww trust" in favour of "modified medium trust" despite having previouswy announced on deir bwog dat dey had been abwe to work directwy wif Microsoft to engineer a system dat couwd accommodate Fuww Trust widout compromising de security, scawabiwity, and performance of oder users.[27][28]

The onwine controw panew was custom buiwt by and for de Rackspace Cwoud service (as opposed to using controw panew software wike cPanew).[30]

The controw panew incwudes management interfaces for de Cwoud Sites, Cwoud Servers and Cwoud Fiwes services. There was once a web based fiwe manager, but dis was removed for undiscwosed reasons. It awso awwows users to manage muwtipwe cwients and de pwans and products (e.g. databases, 24x7 support) dat appwy to dem, wif white wabew branding options for messaging. The cwients demsewves have access to a restricted version of de controw panew dat awwows dem to conduct administrative tasks such as managing maiw accounts.[31]

The controw panew is awso home to de biwwing and reporting functions and provides access to support materiaws incwuding devewoper resources, a knowwedge base, forums and wive chat.[31]